


lotus eaters

by lances



Series: write in blood or don't bother [1]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: (i hope??), Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, In Character, Introspection, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, assuming these self-sacrificial and wholly destructive clowns live past it lol, kuroro's still a prick but hes a prick in love, this is set after the black whale/dark continent arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 01:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16295756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lances/pseuds/lances
Summary: "Just say the word."Without breaking their gaze, Kuroro reached for Kurapika’s wrist, setting the Cloth down in the center of his upturned palm. It wouldn’t unravel unless Kuroro gave the order or removed the bookmark, but that small show consideration slackened Kurapika’s shoulders.After a long moment of their hands resting together, Kurapika found his voice. “Now.”(or: kuroro helps kurapika bury the scarlet eyes - even if it comes with the daunting tax of being honest)





	lotus eaters

**Author's Note:**

> find my dumb ass [@itsillumi](https://itsillumi.tumblr.com)

It was quieter than he remembered it being—no leaves breaking under heel, no voices trailing behind running feet, nothing to suggest a community once founded itself between bark and horizon. Kuroro wasn’t sure what to make of the sight of an empty Lukso; he’d only ever seen it in darkness, lit on fire with the sound of panic. This was new, and as he followed Kurapika’s form into the forest, he thought back to seared grass and the smell of hutted temples burning incense.

Open chest cavity or not, he didn’t regret it.

Kuroro didn’t pretend he did, either, and Kurapika never asked him to. It went unsaid that the Gene’i Ryodan were deliberate creatures. They never committed crimes without picking them apart for payoff and penalty, and back then, Kuroro had sat and considered every outcome. Sure, he hadn’t controlled for the possibility of a survivor, but everything else was in the bag when he decided to give the kill order.

If Kurapika chose to be with him now, it wasn’t because Kuroro repented—it was because Kurapika accepted reality for what it was and Kuroro for who he was.

Accepted the things he’d done. The things he was bound to do, too.

Nothing changed, not their pasts, not their moral maxims. Kuroro was still a thief without a conscience, and Kurapika was still self-sacrificial, still sanctimonious.  _Maybe that’s why we fit so well_ , he mused, watching Kurapika’s hair thicken with humidity, the untied strands sticking flush to his nape. And they did work, for the most part. After depriving one another of love and companionship, it was divine irony they’d find both in each other. No one in their right mind would spare either of them that courtesy, not anymore.

Kuroro stopped a foot or two behind Kurapika when they came into a clearing, large and distinct, enough to house a village with ease of space. Grass rose from scarred land and trees on the horizon were still sheathed in charring, a handful burnt down to stumps that never grew back, flowers at their base. It was a luxury, he supposed, to see the modest recovery. Then again, recovery seldom solved things.

It certainly didn’t do much to cloak the smell of rot Kuroro would always associate with the place.

Kurapika was a walking image of that reality—his stoic attitude making him out to be a man put together. Kuroro knew better, he saw past it; the thing about masks, he mused, apathetic, is that someone always caught sight of the chipping at the corner and the knotted strand that held them in place. In this world, no one was truly hidden, and as Kurapika’s fingers flexed once, twice, thrice, Kuroro saw hurt mirrored in every curl.

“I’m going to bury them where the village hearth was,” Kurapika spoke, hollow like he was talking through Kuroro rather than to him. “It’s more logical than the temple remains.”

“And why’s that?” Kuroro stayed put, making no move to get closer. He couldn’t offer Kurapika the closure that came with regret and apology, so Kuroro would give him the physical and emotional space he needed instead. The tradeoff was a weak one, small and modest, and all he could do.  _Being honest’s an incredibly restrictive virtue, but repentance isn’t for me, darling._

“Well, temples are for worship and harvesting good energy,” Kurapika was quiet for a moment. “The hearth is where the pyre stood.”

There was nothing to say to that, and Kurapika didn’t wait for a reply. He walked forward, with a side-lined Kuroro watching him navigate a land that used to be his. It wasn’t anymore, it didn’t hold any of the monuments that made it recognizable. Still, Kuroro saw it, the belonging. Somehow, Kurapika fit into the frame even if he hadn’t been a part of it for years, even if the background was painted over. With his sleeveless tribal top and his lemon-honey hair, it was unmistakable: Kurapika was a Kurta, in blood, bone and heritage.

Kuroro pitied him all the more.

Kurapika strode without looking around, his mind undoubtedly set and his memory too fresh for hesitation. Kuroro didn’t know what to think, back when the other voiced his desire to come back to Lukso. He didn’t know what to expect— _Quick trip? Memorial? Grave visitation?—_ and every guess was more sentimental than the next. Even then, Kuroro knew he wouldn’t see Kurapika cry; that type of vulnerability wasn’t his to witness. Relationship or not, it was mutually understood what that openness would mean.

_Forgiveness._

Not love, forgiveness—the only thing Kuroro knew he’d never get.

His steps were slower than Kurapika’s, smaller and more calculated. The clearing was a lot narrower than he remembered, with daylight contouring the area, drawing boundaries to a place that once felt boundless in the dark. Despite himself, Kuroro’s disappointment came like heartburn; Lukso was supposed to be mythic, taboo. All the tales were easy to remember—long and drawn in back alleys, balm on bribed lips—and the way it was talked about back then had his meteorite blood  _rioting_.

People often forgot, after all, that absolute poverty had the potential to corrupt absolutely—all it needed was a little power, a little will and enough bitterness.

Lukso now, a pale shadow of what it was, almost bothered him. Progress was slow, that was natural; the place wouldn’t rise from ashes on its own and mother nature was a slow fix.  _Still,_ Kurapika was his own brand of extraordinary, and maybe Kuroro assumed that exceptional will came from this very soil.  _Well, apparently not,_ the edge of his lip rose, boot casting dirt and debris to the side.

“Here.”

Looking up, he saw Kurapika nod his head in the direction of a dug fire pit, its rim darkened with age and use, the dry soil seared a coal-black. Kuroro blinked in acknowledgment, moving forward to meet Kurapika near the hearth’s edge, close enough to smell sweat and lavender wafting off the planes of Kurapika’s forearms and the base of his throat. The scent was an organic one, well suited, adding something nameless and characteristic to Kurapika’s presence.

“Alright,” with a brief flick of the wrist Kuroro let Bandit’s Secret manifest, coming to rest in his palm. Kurapika didn’t blink at the practiced movement, having seen it too many times to count. Kuroro found his bookmark, tilting the leather cover to expose its length;  _Fun-Fun Cloth._ What a juvenile name, not scoffing was a struggle whenever he needed to use it. Kuroro's pride was a citadel, after all. 

Using his free hand, he pulled the sack from his coat pocket. For how childish its title was, the Cloth was perhaps one of the most useful  _nen_ abilities in his skill-hunter. To carry the weight of the world in a weightless little pouch—well, it reminded him how versatile human aura was. Kuroro smiled,  _how nice, there are benefits to being a perso_ —

Any thought or leftover breath were forfeit the minute he glanced back,  _good_   _goddess._

The nebulous red of Kurapika's eyes flattened his lungs, concentrated and raw, shades shifting from the darkest, most saturated cherry-wine to the faintest pink. There was strength in the way Kurapika refused to look past the grey fabric resting in Kuroro’s hand, the angle of his jaw flexing and rolling. Kuroro didn’t move from where he stood, already too close for comfort; this man, whether he liked it or not, would always be a volatile creature.

_Unpredictable._

Instead, he chose to admire those irises for however long the moment was, deciding they looked better on his lover than they ever had on nameless tribals. No, the rest of the Kurta couldn’t hold a candle to the power simmering right under Kurapika’s skin, there for Kuroro to touch, to worship. It was a wonder that they ended up together, and he chose not to question it for too long—just like he chose ignorance over understanding when it came to those eyes.

He’d seen the shift time and time again, just like he’d triggered that burnt brown time and time again all those years ago. Rage suited the Kurta wonderfully, changed their mild features into something more interesting, more intense. Kurapika was no different—but at that moment, eyeing the softness between his brows, Kuroro realized something essential: Kurapika wasn’t angry.

_Are you—is that _—__

Acceptance.

Pawning dozens of eyes didn’t tell Kuroro anything past the basics: red showed up when fury came to the party. That was the rule. He bit the inner corner of his lip, watching Kurapika breathe through his nose. Some realities didn’t exist to be understood, so Kuroro never bothered trying. He wouldn’t attempt dissecting what was clearly out of this world; no one would succeed if they tried. Still, seeing the Scarlet Eyes mirror an emotion other than wrath was—something else.

Kurapika was something else.

Kuroro’s heart beat itself to chaos,  _you’re extraordinary._

He was a well of knowledge without realizing it, and Kuroro being the selfish man he was, was nothing if not an opportunist. Then again, he hadn’t planned on asking Kurapika for his past and Kuroro hadn’t planned on sharing his own, because while history was king, they were two uncelebrated outliers; they meant nothing. He wasn’t sure why that excited him as much as it did.

Even in losing everything, in losing  _everyone,_ he found a parallel of himself—less free, more beautiful, with a heart like a burning mausoleum. 

“Alright,” he repeated, breathless and unblinking, “Just say the word.”

“Which?” Kurapika’s smile didn’t surface and his tone stayed flat despite the teasing response. Kuroro took it in stride, leaning his body forward, the iron toe of his boots brushing Kurapika’s flats. Without breaking their gaze, Kuroro reached for Kurapika’s wrist, setting the Cloth down in the center of his upturned palm. It wouldn’t unwind unless Kuroro gave the order or removed the bookmark, but that small show consideration slackened Kurapika’s shoulders.

After a long moment of their hands resting together, Kurapika found his voice. “Now.”

The Cloth folded out from an inch-by-inch sample to a bedsheet, canisters falling without grace to the ground, rolling by their ankles. The glass was too thick to shatter, they both knew, but Kurapika’s eyes tightened shut until the last of countless cylinders came to a still. Whatever  _nen_ kept the Cloth visible began to fade, revealing Kurapika’s empty hand under it and the atlas of scars and veins that ran over his skin.

Kuroro was close enough to feel Kurapika’s exhale before he heard it, drawn lips rounding.

 _Gods,_ being this close to him—enough to dot the freckle at his temple and line the cut through his brow and trace the open angle of his mouth—it was driving Kuroro into the ground. Kurapika was beautiful, even if he didn’t care to admit it. Tired and grieving and still radiant, skin dewy with that golden streak of youth.  _If you look like this sleep-deprived and sad, how will you look happy?_

Kuroro wondered if he’d ever get to see it.

Kurapika cleared his throat and took a steadying inhale, opening his eyes to brown. “Ah, thank you for that.”

“That’s unnecessary,” Kuroro’s voice was a collected baritone, same as always, even when they were surrounded by severed organs and singed land. “You already know this.”

“I do,” Kurapika gave him a single, solemn nod.

It sealed the conversation, and without another word, both of them moved to gather the containers. The process was systematically morbid, the Gene’i Ryodan having etched numbers onto each canister in case pairs were separated or taken out of the wooden frames. Predictably, many of them had been, and terrible as it was, Kuroro was thankful he thought ahead back then, even if this isn’t exactly what he envisioned. Kurapika was silent, not responding to Kuroro’s soft,  _‘take this one’_ s and  _‘here’_ s. It wasn’t hard to tell that the inhumanity of it all was getting to him.

Kuroro had reduced the Kurta to a set of stats and unsettling home ornaments. Just as casually, he offered to bury the damage.

Kuroro ran a tongue against the back of his teeth, placing pair after pair into the fire pit without taking the time to look or appreciate how they felt in his palms. The vice of the easily bored, he guessed; he’d had all the time in the world to appreciate the Eyes when he’d first carved them out. After seeing Kurapika’s, though, it dawned on him that all these paled in comparison. Maybe it was because Kurapika was alive, maybe it was because affection clouded judgment. Either way, he made quick work of the situation. 

Kurapika did not.

Kuroro caught him studying set after set, sometimes lingering as he thumbed crescents into glass.  _What’s he doing—is that his way of mourning?_

Once the penultimate pair were stacked, Kuroro watched Kurapika cradle the last canister with some measure of interest. The sight was jarring, if anything. Kurapika’s form was uncoiled and lax, his shoulders drawn down and his neck craned. It was nothing like the stress Kuroro was used to seeing, and just the sight of his eyes—flat swatches, unlit—had Kuroro breaking the silence they’d maintained for over an hour.

“What are you doing?”

Kurapika looked up at him slowly, staring.

“You’ve done it a couple of times now,” Kuroro explained, cocking his head, eyes wide with interest. He kept his voice controlled and monotonous, knowing that a single misplaced word had the potential to trigger Kurapika in this state. That was the last thing either of them needed, the day coming to a somber close.  _We’re not lacking in tragedy, not tonight._ “Staring.”

He held onto Kuroro's gaze for a while, a drawn second that had Kuroro wondering if he’d get a response. Without blinking, Kurapika found his footing. “Answer me this, Lucifer—what do you know about the Kurta’s eyes?”

Kuroro’s brow quirked, a quick rise and fall at the unexpected question. “Not much. Why?”

"Well," the corner of Kurapika’s lip curled, caustic, “we didn’t know much either.”

A potent punch to the gut, is what that was. When Kuroro didn’t reply, Kurapika sighed and turned back down to the single eye in his hold, swallowing before he fit it between two others.

“To answer your question,” he started, looking down at the polished assortment, his clothes dusted with grey, “I was putting a face to each of them.”

_Ah, so he was mourning. I was right._

“That’s ridiculous,” Kuroro's response was automatic, almost knee-jerk. Filtering his thoughts wasn't something he did often, and he didn't plan on changing that any time soon. “They’re identical, there’s no detail to tell them apart. The labels aren’t name-based.”

"Oh?" Kurapika snorted a gentle laugh that was more sad than it was bitter, earring swinging to catch what remained of daylight, casting it onto his skin. “I'm afraid you’re not looking closely enough,  _danchou_.”

Kuroro stayed silent.

“We understand things through the names we give them,” Kurapika explained, his calm smile sweetened by a memory Kuroro couldn’t see. “Orca became dangerous when we called them killer-whales, and the Eyes became  _just red_ when we called them scarlet. Simple, isn't it? People think of red, so people see red. It's human nature to project and dismiss. We forget that each color's a spectrum—people are a spectrum. Kurta weren’t any different.”

Kurapika might have missed the way he referred to his tribe as separate from himself, but Kuroro didn’t.

“They each had their own set, you could say,” he continued, tilting his head skyward. The clouds fell around them, sun-logged and heavy with the first mouthfuls of evening. “My mother’s eyes were dark, Kuroro, prune dark. Father’s were pink like hibiscus.”

“I see,” he lied, and given the smile Kurapika tossed his way, he knew it too. Kuroro couldn’t bring himself to care, instead appreciating the way light traced Kurapika’s features, burning one eye lighter than the other.

His mind humored the image of a young Kurapika, brimming with nature analogies and hope, existing a foot or two from where they now stood. It was surreal; he’d only known one Kurapika, a vengeful, trigger-happy god. But just like everyone else, even he had a childhood—one Kuroro would never fully understand.

Because Kuroro grew up between the red brick of walls unpainted, in a city where fog was as thick as bone and the smell of gasoline never left the seams of his clothing. Kurapika grew up where flowers bloomed from soil, not from cracks in cement. He was spring and Kuroro was—

Kuroro was something else.

Something worse.

For the first time in too long, he felt the shame associated with Meteor City, but before it got the chance to settle in his lungs, Kuroro hummed and looked up at the sky as well. “And what happens now?”

“Who knows? We toss some dirt over them, call it a day, call it a life,” Kurapika snorted, realizing how nihilistic he sounded a little late. “Sorry. I didn’t plan that far ahead.”

“How fatalistic,” Kuroro commented.

His periphery caught Kurapika lowering his head. “Sure. Guess I’ve always been.”

“No,” Kuroro slanted his eyes, meeting Kurapika’s calm head-on without turning down. “I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t believe that,” Kurapika repeated with a ghost of a smile on his lips; rare amusement. “And what makes it so tough to believe, Lucifer?”

“No one who grows up in a place like this is born a pessimist,” Kuroro said simply and watched the smile slide sideways off of Kurapika’s features. “No one raised here is born a monster—the world turns you into one.”

_I turned you into one._

“You really believe that?”

“I do.”

Kurapika sighed, exhausted. “Nothing’s ever pure enough to keep a person holy forever, not even Lukso.”

“I don’t believe that either.”

“Then you’re more naive than I thought,” Kurapika fixed him with apathy, “Paradise as a prison is no paradise at all. I only learnt that when I lost this place.”

“Oh?” Kuroro lowered his head and raised an eyebrow. “That’s strange, people tend to romanticize the things they lose. We’re more critical of the things we have, those are easier to take for granted.”

“Maybe,” Kurapika considered him for a breath, “but sometimes you’re a little too close to overcome your biases. Existing is violent, life is violent, Kuroro, and living in Lukso meant pretending it wasn’t. You can’t—” Kurapika’s head shook, frustration etched into his features, “no one can  _live_ like that, in a bubble.”

“Lotus-eaters,” Kuroro commented, idle and automatic, “Intoxicated by their own delusions.”

“Yeah,” Kurapika bit his lips inward, “drunk on a peace of mind that doesn't fucking exist.”

This time, he didn’t need to lie.

“I understand.”

If Lukso was paradise lost, an inescapable heaven, then Meteor City was an inescapable hell—two sides of the same coin, hailing opposite ends of the same damn spectrum. Kuroro couldn’t understand how something could be too good to be good, but he knew the claustrophobia of being tied to a place for fate and misfortune's sake.

No one could escape Meteor City. It wasn’t that they couldn’t leave in the physical sense—they could, boundaries never mattered, the state-system never mattered—but there was nowhere to go for social pariahs. They were staples of pity, people made to shun. No meteorite, even if they had the charisma and the smarts and the ambition, could ever truly leave.

They could never rejoin society, if they were ever a part of it to begin with.

And just like that, the paradigm he existed in shifted, unlocking and resealing. Kuroro took in the sight of Kurapika with open lungs, and when the words left the safe haven of his throat, he knew they were true. They were true and untouched and unveiled and unrivaled in their emotion.

“I’m in love with you.”

There was a moment where even nature fell silent; no cicadas, no wind—just the gentle unhinging of Kurapika’s jaw and the crushed blackberry flush that swam beneath his skin. There was no room to take back words, and Kuroro found that he didn’t want to.  _Love me when I least deserve it,_ he swallowed, watching the auburn of Kurapika’s eyes dilate,  _that's when I’ll need you most._

Kurapika’s disbelief was tainted with a raw type of fear Kuroro’d never seen before—but that didn’t matter, not past the moment he noticed it, because buried under there was something else—something sweeter.

 _Relief_.

Steeling his spine, Kuroro took himself forward in strides, arm outstretched to cradle the base of Kurapika’s neck. He drank in everything the moment had to offer, the dampness of hair under his touch, the heave and dry sob he heard against his lips, the darkness that suited Lukso far more than the light—everything. Kuroro singed it into bone and wrote it into memory, the feeling of Kurapika’s forehead resting along his own, that peaked nose driving a divot into his skin.

He didn’t kiss him—not yet, no. Pressure was a dangerous game, and Kuroro refused to let Kurapika sink into it; there would be a time to overthink things later. So Kuroro closed his eyes and focused on the lashes against his skin and the body that locked so nicely into his own.  _You were made for me,_ Kuroro breathed him in,  _and I’d damn myself for you._

When Kurapika spoke, his voice was hoarse and nearly hollow. “I can trust you, right?”

Kuroro gave him a long, unmodulated hum, leaning forward to brush a set of kisses to the corner of his lips and up the line of his jaw. He didn’t open his eyes, not until his mouth came to a still in Kurapika’s hair. They stayed like that for a while, neither counting the minutes, just the breaths between them. Kuroro felt Kurapika’s hands rise, clinging to the sides of his coat, deliberate.

“You know,” Kuroro said, finally, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this honest.”

“Honesty, of course,” Kurapika’s laugh was voiceless and tired, the silent rise and fall of his collar its only indication. “Sets your soul on fire, doesn’t it?”

Smiling, Kuroro opened his eyes and kept them lid, hands reaching to pull Kurapika’s into his own. Their foreheads stayed together, skin slick with humidity, Kuroro’s pride long swallowed and digested. “My cold, cold soul, yes.”

Kurapika pulled his hands away, choosing to frame Kuroro’s face instead. “Your love’s going to ruin me.”

“Yeah,” Kuroro swallowed, leaning into the touch, “Yeah, it might.”

"That's alright," eyes, still brown and unlit, bore into his own. “I wear ruin pretty well.”

It was all the consent Kuroro needed, body tilting into Kurapika’s, their joints bolting and his breath vanishing somewhere along the way—and when their lips met, it was a gunshot of absolution.

_I'd damn myself for you, my love._

**Author's Note:**

> dial tone
> 
> i'm so sorry


End file.
